


Inked Over

by amerande



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rumbelle Revelry, cw: horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amerande/pseuds/amerande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumbelle Revelry (2015) gift for tumblr user applejackcat. </p>
<p>The three prompts given: forgotten, scared stiff, ghosts gather here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inked Over

Rumplestiltskin was away, and Belle was cleaning - or she had been, at least. In her regular pass through Rumplestiltskin’s study to sweep and dust and set things straight, she’d come across a book he’d left out for her. Well, perhaps “left out” was a strong way to put it, she admitted, but the cabinet it had been tucked in had been unlocked, which was almost the same as an invitation. The master of the Dark Castle knew that Belle often went through the room to clean and normally took care to hide away things that he didn’t want her touching. Belle reassured herself that this book was, then, perfectly fair game. Normally she would have passed it by, as there were plenty of books in the library that she hadn’t yet read, but as soon as her dustcloth passed over this one, she’d had an urge to examine it. When she finished cleaning the rest of the room, her curiosity still pulled at her, and she finally decided to satisfy it.

The tome was heavier than she’d anticipated, and Belle nearly tumbled over with the weight of it as she pulled it off the top shelf. Sitting down with a huff, she examined the book in her lap. It was ancient - this was evident in the stains of age that covered the book and its pages. The cover was glossy black marred with scratches and dust that seemed to have been ground into it through the years. It was titled in a language she couldn’t make out, but as her fingers traced over the embossed lettering, she felt a shiver run down her spine. A monster - or perhaps it was a series of monsters, she couldn’t quite tell - had been drawn on the cover, and she fancied that it writhed faintly as she tilted the book this way and that. Its pages were thick and stiff, made of some sort of stretched hide that felt strange in her hands. The whole thing smelled of dust and stale air.

 After a moment more of hesitation, Belle opened the book.

 Downstairs in the great entry hall, the door to the castle shuddered open with a groan.

  

* * *

  
Night was falling soon - the air was already chill and damp, and light was fading too quickly. Belle knew that her chances to escape were dwindling. If she remained inside the cobweb-rimmed hellhole she’d found herself in, it would surely return to find her there. If it did...she shuddered, pressing herself into a corner as if to hide from the very thought. The bricks of the walls stood out like vertebrae or finger bones, poking here and reaching out from her at all angles as if to keep her there.

So she must escape - escape, and hope that the thing couldn’t track her. Maybe find her way back to safety or to shelter. In the depths of her mind, something was stirring - memories of a safe haven, a strong castle where she might find haven from the terror that she knew would pursue her.

She’d searched all through the place for a weapon - down the winding corridors, up the narrow stairways, feeling her way through the pitch black and trying to clamp down on the bile that rose in her throat at every half-imagined shadow and every moan of the wind against the ancient structure.

She hesitated, mind racing. _How had she come to this forsaken place?_

She couldn’t even say how long she had been here, or when she had last been safe. All her memories felt like they were years and miles away, dim and warped through the lens of time, a kaleidoscope shower of impressions and images that flitted away when she tried to focus on them. Drugged, then? Enchanted? She didn’t know - she just hoped she could find her way to the safety that seemed to be tugging at the corner of her mind.

Fear flooded her heart at the thought of leaving the ancient castle. At least here, she had stairways to run through, corners to hide in, places she might lose her pursuer. What if she found herself in the forest outside and unable to hide? Worse still, what if the thing happened to be approaching the castle this very moment? It was as if she could feel its oppressive presence drawing nearer, a stench like death rising up to choke her.

There was nothing for it. Steeling her heart against these fears that would leave her trapped, Belle snatched up a cloak she had found in her desperate hunt through this horrible place and ran for her life.

Out the leering entryway with decorations like teeth all around it, down the cobbled walkway lined with loathsome gargoyles, and past the spiked fence mounted with unspeakable horrors she ran, fleeing blindly until she had reached the relatively safety of the forest that encircled the castle like hungry souls. Even then she was driven on by her fear-fueled certainty that the monster was surely behind her, dogging her every step, and ran until she all but fell into a small brook that ran through the woods. The water was dark and sluggish, but Belle didn’t dare pass up a chance to drink.

As she drank and rested, Belle took stock of her options - and they weren’t many. With no idea _where_ the castle she’d escaped from was, it was impossible to even think of finding her way back to safety - and even that plan would have been fouled up by the persistent muddling of her memories. No matter how hard she focused, she could only get glimpses of memories which _felt_ like they should be clear.

Luck and gut instinct, she decided, would have to be her guiding lights. Whatever had guided her steps since leaving her confinement had taken her to this sheltered stream and a chance to collect her thoughts; she would have to continue to trust in it. The more resolved she became to this, the more she seemed to feel a tug to go in a certain way. Like in every other direction, it was full of trees and darkness, but she felt very positively about it. It felt... _safe_. After one more careful moment of listening for sounds of pursuit, Belle returned to her travel through the woods.

As she journeyed, Belle felt more and more confident. She had escaped, after all. The ominous castle was far behind her, there were no signs that she was being followed by its terrible master, and the woods felt more warm and welcoming than she had feared when she had made her plans to flee. From inside the castle, the trees had seemed _hungry_ and foreboding, grim sentinels with their claws outstretched to receive her; now that she was under their bows, she had the strangest sense of shelter - a sense that grew only stronger as she continued along her chosen course.

 

* * *

  
At last, she came upon another clearing, and a sense of rightness rang through her - followed by swift understanding.

In the middle of the clearing, halfway buried in a mound of earth grown over with a tangle of vines and grasses, a silver sword was gleaming in the moonlight. Power rolled off it like a palpable light, a ghostly, shimmering presence.

It was meant for her, she was sure. To kill her captor, her tormentor. A weapon that might even the odds against even so awful a horror as that which filled the castle.

She must face the evil she had fled.

 

* * *

  

* * *

 

So that was it.

Rumplestiltskin poured himself a brandy he knew wouldn’t actually get him drunk and stared into the yawning emptiness of the Dark Castle.

She’d finally come to her senses. He’d almost dared to hope - he sighed and drank the shot, then threw the glass against the wall. The shattering sound was pleasant and over too soon. Maybe he could go to a storeroom and find some other things that would break well.

When he’d given her the chance at freedom, he’d expected he would never see her again. When she came back, he’d almost dared to hope it meant what it could never mean. After their disastrous kiss, he’d expected her to leave again, but she never had. They’d settled into a sort of domestic bliss that he now acknowledged had been too good to last.

And then he’d returned from a deal to find her gone, the castle deserted - she hadn’t even bothered to swing closed the castle door when she left. That last indignity should hurt, should count as some sign of disrespect - but it was dwarfed by the towering abandonment that loomed around him.

He made his way upstairs to his chambers, feeling despair crawling up his skin and rooting around, searching for his heart.

As he passed his study, something gleamed in the corner of his awareness, more of a presence than a sight. It seemed to almost whisper to him. He turned.

There, in the darkness of his study, lay a tome he’d recently acquired - a tome he was _entirely_ certain he’d not left out in such a vulnerable position.

Everything fell into place, and before he’d fully realized the implications, he was racing back downstairs.

He had to save Belle.

 

* * *

  

* * *

  
Belle didn’t know how long she’d stood transfixed by the sword. The moment she pulled it from the earth, memories had begun whispering through her, reminding her of who she was - and what she must destroy. 

She’d stood still in the moonlight, listening to the caress of the voices of the memories that flooded her.

Stood still long enough, in fact, that the monster had entered the clearing and was almost upon her before she looked up.

 

* * *

 

* * *

   
“Belle.”

He drew near her tentatively, watching her taut form for signs or tells - of what, he wasn’t certain. She seemed enraptured by the sword in her hand. It was a grisly, foreboding looking thing of dark, rusted metal and sharp spikes.  It seemed oddly out of place in the hands of his delicate little maid. Her dress was tattered from her journey through the woods, her cape ragged and snarled with leaves and brush, and she was staring at this gnarled weapon like it was her salvation. His heart lurched in his chest -

and then she turned to look at him, fire and anger in her eyes.

“Belle,” he said again quickly, stepping back from her. “It’s me, only me.”

" _You_ ,” she spat. “As if _that_ would make me feel better!”

He tried not to flinch, and soldiered on. “Belle, you read a book in the castle. Remember? You must have come across it while you were cleaning, a black book-” he cut off abruptly as she stepped toward him, sword held up and pointed at him.

“You’re a monster, Rumplestiltskin,” Belle said.

“I won’t argue the point, Belle,” he said, then held up his hands as she advanced yet again. He wasn’t entirely certain what had a hold of her, but he didn’t think she’d react well if he tried to use magic on her. “But you _did_ read a book. It was bound in black and -”

“You stole my life from me,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “My marriage, my family, my people.”

“Belle, you’re not listening,” he pleaded.

Then he saw her arm. Her hand, where it gripped the sword, had turned black as pitch. Veins of darkness were running up her fair skin, wrapping around her wrist and moving up.

Puzzle pieces fell into place.

She _wasn’t_ listening. She couldn’t possibly hear anything good from him.

He hadn’t known precisely what the book was, but he’d felt like it deserved further inspection. Now, he lamented silently, it was all too clear why. Of course the book _wanted_ to be kept around. That it had altered Belle had been clear from the moment he’d realized she must have touched or read it, but the nature of the change…

Rumplestiltskin realized that Belle - and the damned sword - had moved closer to him again. Keeping his hands up in what he hoped was a supplicating gesture, he stepped back again, glancing around the clearing.

There it was. Under the thorny vines that wreathed a mound of earth, near a little disturbance where he assumed Belle had found the sword, was a gravemarker. It was written over in the same writhing text as the book had been, and the words were as inky as the horror creeping over Belle’s skin.

With a flick of his hand, Rumplestiltskin tried to magick the sword out of Belle’s grasp - to no avail. The whispering that had first stirred in his mind when he passed by the book seemed to surge alive with laughter inside him. All around Belle, the air shimmered, a half-there ghost with a twisted face that seemed to fold about her like a coat.

_You didn’t think we’d make it that easy did you, Rumplestiltskin? The girl is our champion, and we don’t intend to let you rob us of her so simply._

He stood perfectly still, searching Belle’s face.

“Belle,” he ventured, “what do you plan to do?”

“I’m going to kill you, monster. I’m going to claim justice for all your dark deeds.” She raised the sword up higher, closer to him.

The darkness had grown and was hidden under her shirtsleeve now; it was hard to tell in the light of the moon whether the darkness around her neck was merely a shadow or the corruption that was overtaking her.

“And you, spirits,” he said in barely a whisper, hoping he’d be heard, “what do you intend?”

_The girl will prepare you, and her use to us will end._

He didn’t like the sound of “prepare.” Death wasn’t particularly a worry, but - a vision swept through him of precisely what the spirits meant. He saw himself, clearly, staked in the clearing by the sword, an eternal feast for the ghosts bound within the book. A blink, and a second vision presented itself. Belle, weakening, being drained, and joining the spirits herself.

The darkness was crawling down her other arm.

“You’ll - you’ll let her go?”

Malicious laughter seemed to roll through the clearing, battering him from all sides.

_Perhaps the curse will fade._

Hardly reassuring.

There were few beings in this realm who he, the Dark One, truly feared - and a Belle who was set on his destruction rated at the very top of the list. She was a credible threat. She’d already been relentless and determined and fierce. Even as his servant, even knowing his power and what he could probably do to her if he put his mind to it, she hadn’t bothered to fear him. Now, fueled by whatever the force inside the book had been, it wasn’t hard to believe that she’d find a way to do what she was being compelled to do.

He could simply outrun her. She was, he assumed, still bound by the constraints of mortals and the non-magical. Forty years, fifty, perhaps a few decades more, he could stay ahead of her for. He didn’t welcome the thought of spending the rest of _her_ life looking over his shoulder for her, unless he could find a way to…

No. Not an option.

If there was a chance she’d be free - he swallowed compulsively against the nausea that ripped through him. He’d never see Baelfire, if he tried to free her. If he took a chance that her imprisonment would fade, he was giving up on seeing his son ever again. If the completed curse could fade - the _curse_!

Memories flooded through Rumplestiltskin, reminders of the most agonizing moment of his life without Bae. The flutter of warm lips against his own, the sweet scent of Belle’s hair, the warm tenderness in her eyes as she pulled back from him. The sensation of his own magic weakening, of the Dark Curse withdrawing, however momentarily.

What chance was there that it would work? If he’d broken the kiss before, could it work a second time?

Leave Belle to wither, break her curse and lose his power, or let her fulfill the curse and hope it freed her. Not good options, those.

Had he not been afraid of her reaction, Rumplestiltskin would have laughed with the hopelessness of it all.

He looked at her face, still unmarred by the grasping dark that had consumed so much of the rest of her.

He stepped forward.

 


End file.
